The problems our nation is now experiencing have literally been decades in the making. Price inflation in categories like housing, health care, child day care and college tuition have been well above average wage gains and the so-called "core CPI" rate for many years. America's economy has very little sense of balance. There are absurd examples of pricing excess all over the place. The falling labor participation rate lately is a side effect of this.
Lots of older workers left the work force by choice, particularly people working service industry jobs. Some quit due to the global pandemic (SARS-CoV-2 definitely kills more older people than anyone else). Others quit due to workplace issues, like customers being violent @$$holes. It sucks enough for an elderly person to work a low wage job just to stay busy. If you don't like your co-workers or boss and are worried some angry psycho customer might punch your lights out why even bother leaving the house? It's easier to make some cut backs and just live off Social Security and pension payments.
The high rates of inflation on food, fuel, rent, etc are forcing some elderly people to return to the work force. Social Security payments will get a 8.7% COLA increase in 2023. That will make it a little easier for elderly people who chose to quit to stay quit.
A little over half of America's population is women. And women represent a big part of the nation's work force. Lots of mothers with young children have been sidelined due to child care costs, among other factors. A lot of single mothers are stuck in a catch-22 situation. If they take jobs they see government benefits slashed to near nothing. Trying to raise kids while living on welfare is a pretty rough existence. Young people are pretty aware of that, which is one reason why the teen pregnancy rate is only one third what is was in 1990.
There are lots of young almost-adults in the US living pretty aimless lives with no vision of a future -other than maybe some fairy Godmother arriving with her magic wand to turn them into the movie stars and rock gods they idolize. They can't afford to move out of their parents' house or if they do move out their "home" is a couch at a friend's house.
Our nation's service sector economy is pretty dependent on that young demographic for its labor pool. And it's an unstable pool. If you have an employee who is still living at home with Mom and Dad, who can't be motivated enough to show up for his work shift (much less stop smoking joints and get out of bed at all) it leaves your workplace in a terrible bind. I bought a foot long sub at Subway for lunch today. The young lady behind the counter was the only one there; two others that were supposed to be helping didn't bother to show up for their shifts. Needless to say, she was pretty stressed. The customers in the store were pretty patient and understanding about it.
College is priced out of reach for more and more of these young people (especially if they didn't apply themselves and get good grades in high school). Our nation's popular culture does nothing to bring attention to "dirty" blue-collar jobs. My brother is a diesel mechanic. He doesn't have a college degree like me, but he makes more money than I do as a graphic designer. There are all sorts of skilled trade jobs that pay pretty decent wages. They're not glamourous white collar jobs, but they can at least help someone without a college education avoid living in poverty.
I've heard people make the suggestion that we should require all young adults to serve at least a couple or so years in the military -kind of like they do in Israel. That seems like a good idea. But the US military today is far different than it was when people were getting drafted to fight in Vietnam. Our military today is far more in a position to pick and choose who they recruit. The Air Force and Marines have very high standards. It's a little easier to join the Army, but it's easy to wash out in basic training if you can't hack it. In recent years I've heard stories from Drill Sergeants about so many kids failing basic training because their fitness levels are total garbage due to spending all their childhood indoors hooked up to a game console. A bunch of them get stress fractures because their bone strength is terrible due to all the sedentary activity. When I was a kid I was playing outside, breaking bones. When I was 11 years old I broke my collar bone and the radius in my right forearm within 90 days of each other. No Atari console back then! It was a good thing my dad was in the Marines and we had military medical benefits.
Our nation's popular culture doesn't help the situation with how it glamourizes substance abuse. It staggers me that more than 100,000 people are now dying from drug overdoses each year. America's suicide rate is three times higher than its homicide rate. Suicide occasionally cracks the top ten list of leading causes of death. Even though deaths of despair are on the rise it doesn't seem like our nation's leaders and cultural icons seem interested in doing anything about it. What we need is a stronger sense of community. Instead Americans are having too much fun getting rage-gasms off of hating each other.
